Reaching Forty...

Reaching forty points has in the recent past been somewhat of a relief. It was always the first and main aim of most seasons and meant success to us, a small club in a big league. But right now it don't mean so much and has almost passed without notice and it has been reached with a bit of a splutter, to be honest.

Yet, we are - most of us anyway - happy with Pardew and the more attacking style than his predecessor, and the character and grill that we now seem to have. And with all the advice we never tire of giving, he does seems to listen to us. A few weeks ago we were all clamouring for a bit of consistency, so he comes us with just that, three 1-1 draws on the trot.

But its the previous topsy-turvyness of the season so far that we don't like, and it has dropped us down the table and we can only be thankful that because everybody else around us is so useless that total of 3 points from the last three games still leaves us in the same position as 4 games ago, eg 5th place.

And I still can't reconcile the fact that of our 25 games, we've scored first 16 times, a total that's only 2nd to the inevitable West Brom, yet manage to score more goals in the last 5 minutes than any other 5 minute period of the game.

But at least we can score goals this season. We've got 35 now, one more than the whole of last season and at least the end of season DVD will be a tad longer than usual. West Brom have scored the most, 56, and the only worrying stat I can find is that our next victims Colchester are the 5th highest scorers in the fizzies, with one more goal than we have.

And finally got to the bottom of the news from the Guardian last week that we were the Fizzies team with the most shots off-target. I've always thought that somebody over there just doesn't like us and at first I thought that they was making it all up. You know, taking a little kick at one of them 'Big Teams' fallen on hard times. And the way they said it sounded like we was sick or something, couldn't hit a barn door from a couple of yards.

Well, personally I take it differently, you got to get there to miss in the first place, so you'll all be pleased to learn that, after more misses on Saturday, that we have once again surged ahead in the embarrassing, or not, race for title of worst shots in the Fizzies. Its all in the football-league site.

We now have a total of 159 shots out of 327 altogether, off the target in our 25 games, edging out West Brom with only 158. West Brom, of course, have some reason to be pleased about that as they have a massive 226 shots actually on the target against our meagre 168 and they have scored a huge 56 times whilst we have just 35 goals to our name.

So in misses, that's just 6.36 per game. With our respectable total of 327 shots, 13 per game, and 159 missing, it means that every time we shoot, 48.6% of the time we miss the target. Upps..

But, like I said, you've got to be here to miss and it seems that we are the team with the fourth most shots On-Target in the Fizzies, after West Brom, of course, with 226, Cardiff 191 and Ipswich 188 and the Addicks with 168. And who do you think has had more shots that anybody else, why its our old friend Jimmy-Floyd with 67 shots and he appears to get most on the target too. And our hot-shot isn't Big Chris, its the little irish fella. Wow..

And there's lots of teams that miss more than not, 7 teams in fact including the currently hopeless Watford.

But the news is bright, or is it, for the team with the least shots on target is poor old Colchester with only 94, although you may remember that they have managed to score more goals than we have. Could it be that little Colchester are the most clinical of all the fizzy teams? Yes, they are, a meagre 94 shots on target and 36 goals, makes them better marksmen than we are. Must be down to hot-shot Kevin, I guess.

Oh, and by the by, don't look at the most-games-since-a-loss page, just don't, its not very pretty.